Becoming a Solo Librarian: Challenges and Opportunities

My mentor recently forwarded me a thrilling job ad for a solo librarian at the Charles Darwin Research Station, located in Ecuador’s beautiful Galápagos Islands. As the only professional librarian present, the successful candidate would get to do digital curation, cataloging, collection development, reference, budget planning, staff management, and ILS and building maintenance. You would be the librarian! This job ad got me thinking about solo librarianship: both the challenges and the amazing opportunities this work presents.

Where would I work?

Solo librarians work in diverse settings, but always alone or with a few student or paraprofessional assistants. In academia, solo librarians may work in small private colleges, satellite campuses, community colleges, or special libraries that get little foot traffic or receive Lilliputian budgets. For many of these institutions of higher education (particularly private for-profit colleges), the library may exist primarily for accreditation purposes, so administration’s low expectations can afford the librarian a lot of flexibility and time for research and professional development. In public libraries, a solo librarian generally manages either a library branch or the only library in a small township or rural district, requiring a lot of responsibility and hard work but conferring an amazing degree of self-direction and autonomy. Volunteers notwithstanding, school media specialists commonly work solo too.

What would I do?

You would get to do everything! Solo librarians might check out and shelve materials, develop and weed the collection, catalog and digitize materials, provide reference and reader’s advisory services, teach information literacy classes, write budgets and grants, hire and supervise staff, negotiate with vendors and administrators, collaborate across departments and institutions, and lead their libraries into the future. The self-direction and flexibility you would enjoy, coupled with the well-rounded skill sets you would develop, could be so worth the hard work and steep learning curve often involved in solo librarianship.

Don’t be intimidated by the new hire messianism of many job ads for solo librarians. The reality for many small libraries is that administration doesn’t mind a holding pattern and may in fact prefer one—instant greatness not required! On the other hand, many other institutions are looking for those smart, enthusiastic, well-rounded newbrarians to shake things up. You can usually tell by the job ad’s tone and phrasing. Either way, you just might be the perfect candidate!

What are the benefits?

As a solo librarian, you will become a self-directed information professional with well-rounded skill sets and experience in human resources and facilities management. These are transferrable skills! Even if you choose not to stay solo long-term, you can translate what you have achieved on the job to a leadership role at a larger institution later on. Additionally, I have the impression that solo librarian positions receive fewer applicants than prime jobs at larger colleges or urban areas, making recent LIS grads more competitive. Once on the job, you get to build advanced collaboration and leadership skills, as you will be negotiating contracts, budgets, and the library’s role in your larger institution or community. Solo librarianship may be an ideal fit for generalists, nontraditional information professionals, or librarians with niches in Grateful Dead music or art museums.

What are the challenges?

Solo librarianship is a chronic condition. Independent of fellow information professionals, you will likely have to rely on conferences, social networks, and independent reading to connect with peers and keep up with developments in the LIS world. In some situations, the workload may wear you out or the responsibility may weigh you down. In private or community colleges whose administrators gripe about the library as a fiscal black hole, you might find yourself frustrated by lack of funding or opportunities for growth. In public libraries, you are the one who will have to deal with problem patrons or trustees, while in school libraries, you’ll be the one handling disciplinary problems and book challenges.

On the other hand, in libraries with low usage, you may sit at the front desk for an hour, yet have not a single person speak to you. (Believe me, I’ve been there!) Isolation of this kind might be why customers who visited Amazon’s page for How to Thrive as a Solo Librarian also viewed the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to Twitter’s amusement.

Screenshot, How to Thrive as a Solo Librarian on Amazon.com, Mar. 18. Credit: Michael Rodriguez

On the other hand, many of us librarians are introverts, and for us solitude is actually conducive to productivity! It all depends on the institution and on yourself.

What should I do?

Be open to opportunities and cultivate diverse skills so that you can apply to those solo librarian jobs and see where the winds of graduation take you!

Are you a solo librarian? Were you once? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

I love that perk of solo librarianship! Our webmaster at MPOW used to manage a community college library back in the Nineties, and he argued his college into using the Internet, despite the entire administration being quite certain that the WWW was just a passing fad. ;)

I just applied to a librarian job at an army base in a small town in Germany, and I’m pretty sure if I get offered the position, I would be the only library science professional on site. I had to have a similar conversation with myself as to whether or not I would want to be in that kind of environment, and because I’m a new professional, I ultimately concluded getting experience doing everything in a library would actually be advantageous.

Solo librarianship would definitely prime you for a directorship or assistant directorship in the States. My director was actually a career military librarian until her soldier husband retired, whereupon she became a public library assistant director. Best of luck!!!

There thousands of solo librarians out there. Some are called teacher librarians, library media specialists, school librarians. It’s not such an uncommon position. I loved it when I worked as a solo (school) librarian because the job was never boring and I got to be a jack-of-all-trades.

I worked as a solo librarian in a private company for some years before another full time colleague was hired and it was lovely! As you said about librarians being introverts, I am an introvert and I enjoyed being on my own and doing things my way! It was a great opportunity to do everything in the library and learn and shape myself on the job. It gives you confidence and strengths. I would certainly do it again.

I’ve worked as a solo librarian for 3 years. The autonomy is wonderful. I haven’t had a supervisor giving me “other tasks as assigned” that keep me from doing actual librarianship. The down side is that my budget dwindled to zero – ZERO. No one is concerned about this but me. My one piece of advice is that if you want to be a solo librarian, make sure you can catalog. You might be amazed at how rare this skill is.

It is not as glamorous as this post, but everyday is new and interesting! You will learn tons on the job and can have a huge impact. The business world moves quickly and you will always have a full inbox. Days are long, but months fly by in my virtual environment. There are endless teams that need information fast. I think it is a unique opportunity if you are the right fit for the organization. You need to anticipate the future and have a clear understanding of a specific domain. My top three qualities that solos need: Patience, Persistence, and Personality.